Twice a year, fashion designers, models, editors and bloggers descend upon Lincoln Center for New York Fashion Week. New collections are revealed and trends emerge while the fashion industry documents every happening and fashion enthusiasts look on eagerly.

Fashion lovers the world over get swept up in the excitement of the eight-day trade show, but there are others who simply don’t get the hype. The blatant and seemingly never-ending racism and lack of size diversity turn many off to New York Fashion Week. Their thinking goes: if they won’t include us, what’s the point of even paying attention?

There’s also the reality that the majority of the collections shown are neither affordable nor immediately accessible. It’s hard to get excited about #NYFW if you’re not seduced by the fantasy of designer clothes you may never own or fit.

Still, there are new promising designers, talented, boundary-breaking models and refreshing style inspiration present at Lincoln Center if you dig deep.

Do you care about New York Fashion Week, Clutchettes? Which designers are you excited to see, if any?

Simple answer, no, and neither do most black people. I think the only people that care are rich white designers and white fashion bloggers. Which explains why their models are always white.

Nika

I could really care less. Yet I love looking sharp and dressing like a sophisticated woman. But I’ll be darned if I’m going to pay $2,000 for an outfit because it has some famous designer’s name on it. The last time anyone really cared about who I was wearing was in high school. These days it’s all about how the clothes and person work together. That industry is racist, biased toward normal looking women and only financially realistic for the top 1%. How am I supposed to desire an outfit when it’s on a white child thats likely only 14 years old? They use girls who are virtually babies so they don’t have to work around womanly curves, and then they all look sick or upset walking down the runway. When I was still in the military and deployed one of the only stations we got happened to be Fashion TV. Each day we would all sit around making jokes about how silly we’d look if we actually wore those clothes. We also felt sorry for the sickly looking models. Most of the guys on my team noted they didn’t find those body types attractive regardless of what designer she was wearing.

Ange B

Nope. Or any other fashion week frankly…..

Jaznea Brumfield

Yes, but then again I go to a fashion school so things like NY Fashion Week gives us an opportunity to mingle with people in our field that could help us out in the future